Plagiarism and mystery

Byline: Molly Moore
Credit: Washington Post Foreign Service
04/27/94

It's a story with all the ingredients of a good mystery,
including a feuding family, a bizarre crime, exotic locales, and a
body on the bedroom floor. The last chapter, however - the one where
the detective calmly explains whodunit and why - may never be
written.

What led 41-year-old Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen, a promising but
wildly insecure writer, to plagiarize from Elizabeth Goudge, a
romance author almost as popular in her day as Danielle Steel is
now? The deception was sure to be uncovered and, over the last two
months, it was.

Aikath-Gyaltsen isn't around to answer any questions. On Oct.
3, she wrote a short letter to Khushwant Singh, one of India's
best-known contemporary authors and her mentor. "I am still in a
very bad frame of mind," she wrote. "Afraid to live, afraid to die.
But you are right. Only I can help myself."

Later that day a niece reportedly found her sprawled on the
floor of her Bihar house with "something white dripping from her
mouth, leading to the belief that it was poison," said Uttam
Sengupta, editor of the Bihar edition of the Times of India. She
died the next day.

Suicide is one obvious explanation. If plagiarism destroys the
integrity of the soul, following up with the destruction of the body
is grim but understandable. But the writer's husband is placing some
of the blame elsewhere: He is accusing Aikath-Gyaltsen's mother and
sister of letting her die by failing to get her appropriate medical
care. He has reportedly asked both police and state officials to
conduct an inquiry.

Finding the cause of death will be difficult. In accordance
with Hindu custom, no autopsy was conducted and the body was
cremated. Reporters in Bihar said the cause of death is listed
simply as "disease," a typically vague notation here.

Meanwhile, Aikath-Gyaltsen's third and final book will be
published posthumously next month. The title: "Hold My Hand, I'm
Dying."

The source of Aikath-Gyaltsen's plagiarism was "The
Rosemary Tree." Goudge's tale of a Devonshire vicarage was pop
fiction, meant to be consumed and forgotten. When it was first
published in 1956, the New York Times Book Review criticized its
"slight plot" and "sentimentally ecstatic" approach.

After Aikath-Gyaltsen recast the setting to an Indian village,
changing the names and switching the religion to Hindu but often
keeping the story word-for-word the same, it received better
notices. In February, the Times called it "magic" and "full of humor
and insight," although it conceded that the "deliberately
old-fashioned" style "sometimes verges on the sentimental."

The Washington Post was also impressed. "Exquisite," wrote Paul
Kafka, adding that the story "is at once achingly familiar and
breathtakingly new. ... {The author} believes we all live in one
borderless culture."

Kafka, a novelist himself, says now that "there's a phrase
`aesthetic affirmative action.' If something comes from exotic
parts, it's read very differently than if it's domestically grown."

He still thinks "Cranes' Morning" is "pretty delightful. Maybe
Elizabeth Goudge is a writer who hasn't gotten her due."

Even those who found something directly out of place about
"Cranes' Morning" found ways to dismiss their doubts.

Jacquelin Singh, writing last July in India's literary
magazine, the Book Review, noted: "Details of the physical
surroundings seem more reminiscent of Europe or England. Villagers'
thatched-roofed hovels are called `lodges' and villagers themselves
`countrymen.' ... Furthermore, formerly rich landlords, more at
home with English fairy tales, nursery rhymes and Shakespeare than
with Hindu mythology and Tagore, are difficult to `place.' "

Still, Singh came to the conclusion that perhaps "all these
anomalies on the Indian scene would doubtless make the setting more
accessible to foreign readers at whom the novelette may be aimed."

Goudge, who died in 1984 after writing dozens of extremely
popular religious sagas set in small English towns, apparently had a
memorable storytelling technique. The first to discover the
plagiarism was an Ontario woman. She read "The Rosemary Tree" 30
years ago, she said in a March 15 letter to Goudge's English
publishers, "but I remember it very well."

She added: "Having no more than a lay person's knowledge of
copyright laws, I express no opinion on this but do wonder how Miss
Goudge's story could be taken over with no acknowledgment
whatsoever. If it were that easy, we could all write bestsellers!"

The Goudge estate was investigating when a Concord, N.H.,
librarian realized she had also read "Cranes' Morning" before. She
told her local paper, a reporter contacted all the relevant parties,
and a scandal was born.

Success and Insecurities

Indrani Aikath was born the daughter of a fairly well-to-do
coal mine owner in the hill town of Chaibasa in Bihar - the poorest,
most backward, most politically violent state in all of India.

Local mafias and vigilantes control the government and the
local judicial system, meting out justice with axes and knives,
slicing off heads or hands of those believed to be criminals. It is
India's largest coal-producing state, and for decades entire towns
and villages have been swallowed by the fires that rage underground
in uncontrollable infernos.

Aikath's family moved in circles that allowed her to avoid the
wretched lives around her. Like the children of many Indian families
with enough money, she studied abroad at Columbia University in New
York City, gaining a Western perspective on life.

Her first marriage was brief, and as a young divorcee she found
many male admirers in the social circles of Calcutta, three of whom
ended up vying for her hand for a second marriage. Friends said she
turned down one dashing military officer because he spoke English
with a Punjabi accent, the Indian equivalent of a blue-collar nasal
rasp.

Instead, she married Sonam Gyaltsen: Tibetan by background, tea
planter by trade, well-mannered if slightly dull by temperament.
Some friends found the couple ill-suited. Said Khushwant Singh: "She
was full of malicious gossip and wit, and he stutters and is
soft-spoken."

She moved to the massive house amid the lush tea gardens of
Gyaltsen's estate in Darjeeling, in the hill country of northern
India. The nearest neighbor was 30 miles away over bumpy, twisting
roads, and a dinner out at the tea growers' club entailed a weekend
stay. The couple's only child was enrolled in boarding schools from
the time he was 7 years old and is now a law student in the south
Indian city of Bangalore.

Aikath-Gyaltsen was "thoroughly bored with the life of being
the wife of a tea planter" when Singh received his first letter from
her almost eight years ago, he said. He responded encouragingly, as
he has done with many young writers over the years. He nurtured her
through her first novel, which she mailed to him in small bites as
she finished each chapter. "It was very powerful," he said.

The correspondence blossomed into friendship, and Singh invited
Aikath-Gyaltsen to visit. One evening, he recalled, she asked
bluntly, "Do you think I'm beautiful?"

"She wasn't," said Singh, "but how do you answer a question
like that?" The conversation added to his impression that she was an
insecure, if highly talented, individual.

Singh did not hesitate to propose that Penguin Books, where his
recommendations are taken as gospel, publish her first work,
"Daughters of the House." The story about strong women prevailing
over bumbling, impotent and unsuccessful men would become a
recurring theme in her writing.

That was in 1991. Two years later, "Cranes' Morning" made its
debut in India. The response and the sales - and Singh's backing -
were enough to earn the author a whopping 10-book contract from
Penguin.

Still, the insecurity persisted. When Aikath-Gyaltsen
accompanied Singh to a book fair in Calcutta, she seemed annoyed at
the fans who flocked to his side in quest of autographs.

"Why don't people ask me for autographs?" she asked.

"You're young," Singh replied. "You'll just have to wait. It
will come."

But when it came to writing, there was little insecurity. She
once boasted, "I can churn out a novel every six months."

That troubled her mentor. "I wish she hadn't started being so
prolific."

Not only did the words seem to flow effortlessly, but her
handwriting was so clear and crisp that her manuscripts didn't
require typing.

But she failed at an attempt to become a regular columnist for
the Statesman, a Calcutta daily. Editors canceled the column after
about six weeks.

According to Singh, she put little effort into the reporting or
the writing. She begged Singh to ask the paper's editors to
reconsider, but he refused, saying, "I warned you, you have to be
more careful."

Caught in a Family Dispute

There was another troubled side of Aikath-Gyaltsen's life: her
family. Her father's death last year was not only emotionally
devastating, it set off a family feud between Aikath-Gyaltsen and
her mother and elder sister over his substantial coal and land
holdings.

She returned to the large family estate in Bihar to protect her
interests. She lived on the second floor of the house, while her
mother and sister inhabited the first. They barely spoke.

When Aikath-Gyaltsen talked to friends she veered between
bragging about how wealthy she would be when the mines were sold and
complaining that she was nearly penniless, a claim that surprised
those aware of the sizable advance she'd received from her publisher
for the 10-novel contract.

Then, suddenly, she was dead. According to accounts from
reporters, friends and complaints filed with the police, her mother
and her sister did not take her to a hospital when they discovered
her on her bedroom floor.

Instead, they called the local doctor, who gave her intravenous
fluids. According to the husband's accounts, the mother retired to
her bedroom and her sister went on to her job as schoolteacher.
Aikath-Gyaltsen sank into a coma and died the next day.

Her husband told police and the press that "since there was
this dispute, they neglected her on purpose, just let her die,"
according to Alka Choudhury, a reporter in Bihar for the Times of
India.

Calls placed to the mother and the sister, said to be still at
their Bihar estate, went unanswered. The husband, who was staying at
a guesthouse in Bihar - a region where telephone connections are
extremely poor - also could not be contacted. He is reportedly
asking for an official inquiry.

When Singh received the small, neatly penned letter from
Aikath-Gyaltsen a few days after her husband called to inform him of
her death, he said, "It shocked me. My first suspicion was
suicide."

Now he is siding with the husband and wrote to the chief
minister on his behalf, seeking an investigation. He said bitterly
of the mother and sister, "They could have saved her and didn't."

Mystery and Aftermath

The various publishers of "Cranes' Morning" have had different
reactions in the past week. In England, the firm got lucky: The book
hadn't yet been published and was easily canceled. In India,
Penguin editor David Davidar said only: "The matter is under
inquiry. It is a legal matter now."

In the United States, Ballantine had shipped 6,500 copies of
"Cranes' Morning," a typical figure for a literary novel. The
publisher has not ordered booksellers to return the book - something
nearly impossible to enforce in any case - but has stopped
fulfilling orders.

Aikath-Gyaltsen's first book, "Daughters of the House," was
reissued by Ballantine in January to accompany "Cranes' Morning."
Although people are obviously looking at it rather doubtfully,
Ballantine Editor in Chief Joelle Delbourgo said: "I have at the
moment no reason to doubt its authenticity. It's in print."

Delbourgo corresponded with the author over two years. "She
never said anything that could have indicated this turn of events,"
the editor said.

Singh, too, is mystified. "I became her father," he conceded.
"She got totally latched onto me as a mentor and guide. I
exaggerated praise for her to build her into a writer of the
future."

But he still can't understand either the plagiarism or her
death. "Nothing," he said, "makes sense."

Staff writer David Streitfeld in Washington contributed to this
report.